SAGAL: Thank you everybody. Great show for you today, we've got George R. R. Martin, the mad genius writer who created "Game of Thrones" coming on to play our game. So get ready to get your nerd on. But first, this is the last week that we have Bill Kurtis filling in while Carl has been on vacation. And Bill, I can't tell you how much fun it has been to have you.

SAGAL: Yes, and we're very excited for your next gig - this is true, we can announce it here - Apple has said that Bill has replaced Siri on the iPhone 5.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The new assistant is named Billy. We're going to try it out.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Billy, are there any good steak houses nearby?

KURTIS: There sure are, Peter.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: Now put me back in your pocket so I can feel your heat.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: If you're ready to answer some questions, give us a call. The number 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

KATE DOHERTY: Hey, it's Kate Doherty from New York, New York.

SAGAL: Hey Kate, how are you?

DOHERTY: I'm pretty groovy, how are you doing?

SAGAL: I'm doing fine. What do you do in New York?

DOHERTY: I am an editor at a magazine.

SAGAL: Oh, what magazine, can I ask?

DOHERTY: It's a decorating magazine, the best one.

SAGAL: Oh, I see the best decorating magazine.

DOHERTY: Yeah.

SAGAL: Well, we need not name the title because everybody knows what that is.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE PIERCE: Taxidermy Today.

(LAUGHTER)

P. J. O'ROURKE: Lob the moose heads.

SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, it's the man behind Esquire's politics blog and also a contributor to grantland.com, Mr. Charles P. Pierce.

SAGAL: Also, it's a humorist and author of the new book, "Don't Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Mr. P. J. O'Rourke is here.

(APPLAUSE)

O'ROURKE: Kate, how do you get bong water out of shag carpet?

(LAUGHTER)

DOHERTY: I'll tell you later.

O'ROURKE: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Kate, you're going to start us off with Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis, filling in for Carl, is going to read you three quotes from the week's news. Your job, correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you'll win our prize: Carl's voice on your home answering. Ready to play?

DOHERTY: Oh yeah.

SAGAL: All right, here's your first quote.

KURTIS: We were just fooling around. He gave me this pat on the shoulder, and that's when it happened.

SAGAL: That was a man named Scott Van Duzer, who became instantly famous when he did what to President Obama this week?

DOHERTY: Oh, gave him that huge lifted bear hug.

SAGAL: Exactly right, he lifted him up in the air, right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: There's getting close to the people, and then there's putting yourself at risk of infection.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The President was visiting Mr. Van Duzer's pizzeria when owner went in for the hug and then the grabbed the leader of the free world and lifted him clear off the ground. Then he smashed the President to the floor, and declared himself the Pizza-dent of the United States, by right of conquest.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It was so weird to see somebody do this to the President. The President. It got weirder when he swung the president in the air, making him laugh.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And then put the President in an enormous high chair and then fed him a piece of pizza. It's like, "Here comes Air Force One. Now, open the hangar."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Kind of cute.

ROBERTS: Now, do you think that was cuter than the picture of Biden with the bikers?

SAGAL: Oh, it was a big week for both of them.

PIERCE: The Democrats won the candid photo contest hands down.

SAGAL: Yeah.

PIERCE: Because Romney has never taken a candid photo in his life.

SAGAL: That's true.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So first of all there's Obama, and the amazing thing is how both these guys dealt with these situations. Obama is picked up. He is in the air and he seems totally fine with it.

SAGAL: I mean he seemed like used to it. Does Michelle pick him up every night when he goes home? Is that her bicep workout?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And as you say, the vice president had his own moment. This photo of him went around of sitting with these two bikers, two men and a woman. And everybody agrees that the vice president and the woman got really kind of comfortable with each other. He gave her a little should rub, right.

But everybody has been staring at the photographs and arguing over whether or not the biker chick sat in Vice President Biden's lap. People are looking at shadows and angles. It's the Zapruder Film of laps.

(LAUGHTER)

O'ROURKE: I'm just trying to put together George Washington, you know, and John Adams...

SAGAL: Being picked up by a pizza guy.

O'ROURKE: Yes.

PIERCE: Hey, man, Taft. That would have been hard.

(LAUGHTER)

PIERCE: Somebody call the marines, we're going to pick the president up.

O'ROURKE: You're thinking physics.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And this is...

O'ROURKE: I'm thinking gravitas, Charlie.

PIERCE: I'm not trying that again.

SAGAL: All right, here is your next quote. It's from an actor running as fast as he can away from a film he was in.

KURTIS: We just assumed that this was another crappy low-budget independent film.

SAGAL: That film is called "The Innocence of Muslims" and it's causing a lot of anger where?

DOHERTY: All over Libya.

SAGAL: Yes, all over the Middle East, especially Libya and North Africa.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: We are not surprised that a movie made in America caused angry riots around the world; we're just surprised it was not "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So we did our patriotic duty at WAIT WAIT and we watched the 14-minute long trailer for this film. It's so bad, it's a wonder that Liam Neeson didn't agree to star in it.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It is a bad movie is what I'm saying. The guy who made it is a mysterious figure. He used the pseudonym Sam Bacile, but a few enterprising reporters used various links and online documents to figure it out. It was really Michael Bay.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: We should have known.

ROBERTS: You know what I feel bad for?

SAGAL: What?

ROBERTS: So it's this little insight into the subculture of really, really desperate actors in Los Angeles.

SAGAL: Yes.

ROBERTS: Because one of the actresses in this, who claimed that she thought she was making something called "Desert Warriors."

SAGAL: Yes.

ROBERTS: ...was paid $500 for many days of work. And I thought how bad do you have to want to work to do something that terrible and only get $500 for it?

O'ROURKE: And I thought, hasn't she heard of porn?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This may be actually the one situation where that would have been the wiser career move.

O'ROURKE: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It would have been less embarrassing to her reputation than to appear in this thing.

O'ROURKE: I tell you, Peter, if people around the world are going to start rioting every time a bad American movie comes out it's going to be a long holiday season, isn't it?

SAGAL: Yes, that's true.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The reviews have not been good. Among the rioters in Cairo, you could see Roger Ebert throwing a Molotov cocktail. He was mad.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And Saudi Arabia gave the movie two thumbs off.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOOING)

PIERCE: You're on your own, Sagal.

(LAUGHTER)

PIERCE: We don't know this infidel.

O'ROURKE: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, for your last quote, Kate, here is a student in Chicago, reacting to news he did not have to go to school this week.

KURTIS: "Screw school. I'm smart enough."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Why didn't he have to go to school?

DOHERTY: Because the teachers were on strike.

SAGAL: Indeed they are, yes, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: It's terrible. It's terrible news for the school children of Chicago. But on the other hand, it's great news for the school children of Chicago. They can't go to school, but they don't have to go to school. The issues are complex.

It has to do not so much with how the teachers are paid but how they will evaluated. They want to be evaluated by tenure and length of service, while Mayor Rahm Emmanuel wants them evaluated via trial by combat.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Some of the schools are open, so the kids have a place to go during the day, but there aren't any classes because there are no teachers. Instead, Chicago city workers are teaching seminars on money laundering and the finer points of patronage employment.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Without teachers - we're so inventive here in Illinois - the state has used some non-violent prisoners in a work release program. So, for example, here's former Governor Blagojevich teaching the color wheel in art class.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He's like, "This is bleeping golden."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: "This is bleeping indigo."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Teachers are out protesting on the streets. It's great to see protest signs with excellent grammar for once. This is true. The meanest protest sign seen in the streets of Chicago was a sign that said Mayor Rahm Emmanuel likes Nickelback.

(LAUGHTER)

PIERCE: That's low.

SAGAL: It's low. And the sign got so much press that the city hall actually released a statement saying "No, he doesn't."